Opentable Eats Up Foodspotting For $10M To Get More Social Around Its Booking Service

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Opentable, the online restaurant booking service, has just announced that it is acquiring Foodspotting, the mobile app that lets users record and link to what they’re eating in restaurants and at home. The terms of the deal were not disclosed in a blog post on Foodspotting’s site or on Opentable’s post, but Alexa Andrzejewski, CEO of Foodspotting, has confirmed a pricetag of $10 million in cash directly to TechCrunch.

Before you start getting worried that this is a classic acquire-and-close down job, catch your breath: Opentable intends to keep Foodspotting going as a standalone business.

The two already worked together somewhat, with Foodspotting pictures coming up in certain Opentable restaurant listings. “But we both realized we could create smarter experiences if we could integrate more deeply by, for example, recommending dishes when you make reservations to enabling restaurants to showcase their best dishes,” Andrzejewski writes.

The idea here is that this will help Opentable secure more reservations on its service. “By adding more visually compelling content to help people decide where to dine and discover dishes they’ll love, we hope to make it even easier to find the perfect table for any occasion,” noted Opentable CEO Matt Roberts in Opentable’s blog post.

In December, Evernote upgraded is Food app to include restaurant finding and recipe finding services, on top of the ability to record whatever you eat.

Foodspotting had, before now raised some $3.75 million from Blue Run Venutres as well as a number of angel investors including Dave Morin and 500 Startups. Opentable went public in 2009 (the same year Foodspotting was founded) and is currently valued at around $1.2 billion.

Acquiring Foodspotting gives Opentable a more social element, a group of users that are in a sense Opentable’s target audience, and some startup-style nous, in an organization that may have moved farther away from some of that agility itself after going public: whether that culture can be integrated and preserved longer term remains to be seen.